Windows OS Heap Problems
I’m having difficulties running Pathway Tools on Windows. I’m constantly getting memory errors. What’s going on?
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I’m having difficulties running Pathway Tools on Windows. I’m constantly getting memory errors. What’s going on?
These explanations apply to Allegro Common Lisp, which is the underlying software used by Pathway Tools. Pathway Tools may require a large amount of computer memory (RAM) to run some commands, to access large PGDBs, or just to start up. The data used by Pathway Tools is stored in a location called "the heap". When Pathway Tools is started it tries to reserve one large block of memory for its heap, probably around 700MB. If it cannot reserve this much memory, that value is automatically lowered. In such a case you may see a message of the form
Temporarily scaling back lisp reserved region from x to y bytes
where x should be around 700MB and y is smaller. This is not an error in itself and Pathway Tools should continue to work.
Another possible error message is something like
lisp heap being relocated by yyyyy bytes
in that case, Pathway Tools is starting up, and this relocation operation — typically caused by a misconfigured Microsoft DLL — may take more than a minute. A typical culprit is Service Pack 2 which hasa DLL that is not relocatable in memory. This problem should not befatal, please wait for Pathway Tools to start up. Microsoft provides a hotfix for Service Pack 2, and you will have to contact themto download and install it.
In other cases, you may see an error message of the form
Error: An allocation request for x bytes caused tenuring and a need for y more bytes of heap. The operating system will not make the space available because the address space reserved for the heap could not be increased.
The error message may vary, but if it contains the “heap could not be increased”, then it is a fatal error and you need to apply one or more of the following remedies. (Please do them in this order)
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Asked: 2013-05-01 16:52:57 -0500
Seen: 4,662 times
Last updated: May 01 '13